We’ve been waiting 2 years for this. We applied in 2019 for 2020 summer, and then covid hit. Well here we are, finally, on beautiful Lac Leman.
Today the fellows resident at the Fondation Brocher give our presentations. The biomedical ethics foundation, located in Hermance, CH, brings together scholars from all disciplines to discuss current developments in the field.
I’m fortunate enough to be able to have a two month residency here this summer to write my book Industrial Pandemics. This airport book (though maybe we should start referring to them as train station books) aims to diagnose and treat industrial diseases, which cause chronic disease, and make infectious diseases worse.
I’ll be giving a webinar lecture Friday May 8th for the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association – the Netherlands as part of their Youth Delegate Programme masterclass series in collaboration with the Dutch ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports (VWS), and the Ministry of International Affairs (BuZa).
I’m excited to share my research in their series on Global Health amidst the COVID-19 crisis.
Today I gave a talk at the Stanford History of Science and Technology Workshop on Industrial Epidemics. It was a pleasure to discuss the ins and outs of public health, corporate malfeasance, and glyphosate in particular with the students and professorate of the History of Science and Technology Program. Especially rich were the insights of Robert Proctor, the coiner of the term agnotology, who has been a great inspiration for my own work.
Here’s the Abstract:
Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have turned out to be quite communicable; the disease vector isn’t some virus or pest, but instead the very bulwark of industrial civilization. While NCDs have always been with us as a species, their normalcy and multiplication is novel. The very system of corporate science, muscle, and capital that helped eradicate harrowing infectious diseases that threatened generations in the 20th century have left in their wake a new epidemic of chronic disease above and beyond background levels for the 21st century to clean up. The rise of chronic disease tracks directly with the rise in environmental exploitation and industrial pollutants. By virtue of epidemiology and randomized control trials, we know that certain classes of people (such as smokers, obese people, chemical manufacturing workers, farmers using pesticides) have inordinately more chronic disease than people without those exposures. Many people, especially as they age, incur multiple chronic diseases, causing them much suffering, and costing them and society extensive financial resources. Merrill Singer ( 2009, xiv) describes how syndemics represent “a set of enmeshed and mutually enhancing health problems that, working together in a context of noxious social and physical conditions, can significantly affect the overall disease burden and health status of a population.” Adopting the public health descriptor of epidemics associated with infectious disease for chronic disease conditions, framing the rise of chronic disease first in developed countries and now worldwide in terms of an epidemic caused by industrial processes, scrutinizes how corporate behavior socially determines the health of populations. This paper focuses on how these mechanisms have manifested in the agrochemical and petrochemical industries.
And my bio:
Yogi Hale Hendlin is an assistant professor in the Erasmus School of Philosophy and core faculty of the Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity Initiative at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, as well as a research associate in the Environmental Health Initiative at UCSF. Yogi has been working at the intersection of public health and environmental political philosophy for 15 years and has published in journals such as MMWR, BMJ, Ambio, PLoS Medicine, The American Journal of Public Health, Tobacco Control, Environmental Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, and the Annals of Internal Medicine. Yogi’s work has been taken up in popular media outlets such as Time, National Geographic, The Guardian, BMJ, CNN, Fox, Salon, Reuters, Gizmodo, Bloomberg, Nautilus, The Revelator, and Science Daily. Yogi is currently writing a monograph titled Industrial Epidemics: Chronic Disease and the Corporate Determinants of Health.
After a successful 2019 Biosemiotics Gathering in Moscow, I’m happy to be sharing a deeper look at my project at the University of Tartu, in Estonia, giving a talk on Multi-level semiosis – and the impact of supernormal stimuli in the human superorganism and holobiont.
This is as part of the Berkeley-Tartu biosemiotic summer seminar in Tartu.
Part I: June 26, with Jeremy Sherman
Part II, July 11, with Yogi Hendlin
Part III: July 15, with Terrence Deacon.
Here is information about the part II.
On Thursday, July 11, at 14.15, Jakobi 2–336, Yogi H. Hendlin (University of California and Erasmus University of Rotterdam) will give a talk
Multi-level semiosis – and the impact of supernormal stimuli in the human superorganism and holobiont
Abstract. This talk draws on classic ethology and insights for humans as superorganisms living in artificial environments. It first describes the case for seeing the human body, and not just cultures, as itself a superorganism, but through the unconventional form of defining superorganism not as cells or individuals only of one species, but as inherently an interspecies phenomenon. Second, I describe how the holobiont view of the human organism helps make sense of this definition of the superorganism as interspecies. Finally, I’ll look at both classical and cognitive ethology to examine how even individuated human cells or other endosemiotic symbionts can also become affected by unfamiliar stimuli stronger than those their evolutionarily-geared heuristics are geared for. This overflow or flood of response to certain stimuli I see as a relevant form of supernormal stimuli, as Niko Tinbergen described this condition, even as I extend it to endosymbionts, beyond Tinbergen’s use of the concept specifically on the individual animal.
After a break, the meeting will continue at 6 p.m. at Vikerkaare 7–8.
We also expect to discuss some new ideas from the recent Gathering in Biosemiotics that took place in Moscow.
Advertising and Agency: An ethological account of how social infrastructure compromises or sustains our autonomy
May 16, 2019 12:00 – 13:00 Bayle Building, J5, Erasmus University Rotterdam Humans like to think of ourselves as autonomous agents, freely making our own rational decisions, despite the temptations and influences of society. Indeed, especially in individualistic liberal societies, the desire to be “unique” and “different” tugs strongly at our sensibilities. As social animals subject to needs to belong, and to have proclivities for certain stimuli, these instincts are often taken advantage of by marketing and advertising in order to sell products. This lecture will examine mechanisms of supernormal stimuli that manipulate our instincts, rendering us less sovereign over decisions and actions, as well as what sort of social infrastructure may act protectively, insulating us from predatory semiotics.
March 4th, 2019, I’ll be giving a keynote to 1500 or so students at my home university, Erasmus University Rotterdam, as part of their Sustainability Days.
They asked me to be fiery and inspirational, so I’ll try my best.
The paper will be put online afterwards on my academia.edu page.
Yes, they forgot my last name, and forgot to put that I’m an assistant professor instead of a full professor (something we academics take very seriously), but it’s going to be a nice event anyhow.
My Erasmus University Rotterdam colleague Alessandra Arcuri and I are organizing a day-long workshop on the most used pesticide in the world: glyphosate. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, has been linked with cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015.
I’m pleased to be giving my welcome lecture to the students and faculty of the Erasmus School of Philosophy, where I have been an Assistant Professor since November 2018, on March 13, 2019.
In other words, I will discuss the Pragmatist perspective on political philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and ontology, and explore the mereological tensions between subjects and the communities from which they emerge. This discussion will, furthermore, unfold according to a critical public health perspective, which takes account of the differences in recognition and resources humans experience.
This Thursday, November 2, 2017, from 6-10pm, I’m very pleased to be presenting my work on interspecies seeing at the California Academy of Sciences. Their NightLife series, where the CAS becomes a 21+ venue for cocktail-fueled science, exhibits cutting-edge hands-on research to the public. Mingling scientists and community, the evening also offers access to their planetarium and living rainforest biosphere exhibit.
My exhibit will be on Interspecies Vision–a look at how other critters see the world, and how we can make sense of their sensory experience through the confines of our human-specific senses.
We’ll also be presenting the 4th yellow experiment: a yellow that only 2-10% of women can distinguish as different, based on the fact that instead of being trichromates like the rest of us (3 different types of color cones in their eyes), they actually have a fourth cone, making them tetrachromates capable of seeing a wider range of the visible color spectrum.
This after-hours museum-going made fun experience seeks to thrill with inquiry, curiousity, and the bizarre wonder of nature.
The pharmaceuticalization of the tobacco industry and implications for public health
Yogi Hale Hendlin, PhD
Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 3:00 – 4:30 pm
CTCRE, Kalmanovitz Library, Room 366
Yogi Hale Hendlin, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education working on inter-industry epidemics and industry subversion of science. His recent first-authored publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine titled “The Pharmaceuticalization of the Tobacco Industry” (reviewed by Reuters) demonstrates that in the face of declining cigarette volumes, the tobacco industry has been actively pursuing alternative forms of “medicinal” nicotine delivery to maintain profits. Hendlin is also currently working on a systematic review of tobacco harm reduction, analyzing the role of industry-funded scientists on the prominence of product substitution rather than cessation and public health measures in the tobacco harm reduction debate. At the intersection of environmental politics, the social determinants of health, and critical public health, Hendlin’s research addresses corporate harms to the health of society and the environment.
I’m honored to be presenting on “The Ecological Self: Harnessing the Power of Our Interspecies Nature for Good” alongside Flow author and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi this Saturday, May 13th 2017 at the Creative Edge Conference organized by West LA College.
I’ll be speaking during the Creative Space Sessionduring 10:45am – 12:20pm.
The WEST TALKS, in the spirit of the TED Talk series, aim to expose students and the public to avant-garde ideas that can help transform the notions under which we operate as a society. Creativity, thinking diagonally, will give us the tools to confront the systemic breakdowns we currently face, and allow us to create better alternatives with finesse and elegance.
The Conference is free with RSVP. Click here to download a PDF of the Conference.
Tonight at the San Francisco Taste of Science Festival, I’ll be giving a talk on “The effects of pollution on organism signaling and human health” at the San Francisco: Climate Change evening.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
7:30pm 9:30pm
TechShop Gallery910 Howard StreetSan Francisco, CA, 94103United States
TechShop
926 Howard Street
San Francisco California 94103
Taste of Science is a public outreach forum for scientists to interact with the public on topics that impact us all, and to make complex concepts and processes intelligible to interested folks.
I’ll be presenting October 5, 2016, 6:30-8:30pm at the California Institute of Integral Studies on the book I’m working on, Interspecies Politics.
The presentation, “Ensemblist Identities and the Ecological Self” is part of my larger project of decentering autonomy into situational cues (à la Kwame Appiah’s work), our biological contingency within and without, and the vulnerability and porosity of human and nonhuman life, borrowing from 4E cognitive science, autopoeisis, biosemiotics, and feminist and postcolonial critiques to democratic theory.
Yogi Hale Hendlin 
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